The Case of the Shattered Monocle
by Enchantaskip
Summary: The murder of a lecherous millionaire threatens to spark war with Germany


The Case of the Shattered Monocle

The summer of 1887 was indeed a busy one for the great detective, and involved two cases of great national import. That of the Naval Treaty is by now well known. The second is one that we felt constrained to keep in conditions of the utmost secrecy until the recent declaration of war with Germany made secrecy unnecessary.

The first halcyon months of my marriage had passed without my having much contact with my friend Holmes. My practice was progressing steadily, but I had more than sufficient free time to become an irritant to Mary and the housekeeper, and finally she suggested one Saturday over breakfast that I take the time to drop in to Baker Street.

Even though I suspected she had plans to engage in shopping excursions to Whiteley's or Barkers, I wasted no time in seizing my hat and stick and complying with her wishes.

The front door of our modest home had barely closed behind me when a barefoot ragamuffin of perhaps ten years of age ran up.

"'Ere, are you Doctor Watson?"

My heart began to pound, for no-one but my eccentric friend would employ such a disreputable messenger. I took the grubby missive he extended to me, tipped him a lavish thruppence, and rent the envelope with hands quivering with excitement.

"Watson, come without delay to 43 Eaton Lane. Bring your medical bag. Holmes."

He had never been one to waste words. I shouted for a hansom and left the cabby grumbling as I flung a few necessities into my bag.

Eaton Lane was quiet, but my experienced eye detected a pair of what had to be plain-clothes men by an imposing doorway. I was right, and they ushered me in as soon as I identified myself.

The hall was large and lavishly decorated, illuminated by a fanlight glazed with intricate stained glass over the door and by a single tall sash window above the staircase on the left. The upper section of this window was slightly open, by perhaps nine inches. Two great double doors in carved hardwood led from the hall to the rest of the house.

The sight that immediately seized my attention was not the delicate proportions of the room, or the marvellous marble Grecian statues that flanked the door, but the body of a massive full-bearded man of middle years that lay sprawled on his back just inside the door.

He was dressed in the trousers and waistcoat of a fine suit, his shirt, tie and boots of the most expensive make. A gold watch from one of the greatest of the Swiss craftsmen hung on it's chain where it had fallen from his waistcoat pocket.

But the most macabre detail was the gold-rimmed monocle he wore in his right eye. The glass had been shattered, and from his eye a great stream of blood had flown, blood that was now congealing on his beard and on the marble of the floor. The small hole in the exact centre of his eye suggested that his death had been caused by a small calibre bullet to the brain.

Death, in my opinion, would have been instantaneous.

Despite the experience my years in the medical profession and in her Majesty's Colours had given me, I found myself shaken by the macabre sight.

At that moment, the door to my left opened and Holmes entered, followed by Lestrade and a junior officer.

Holmes greeted me with his customary reserve and I shook hands with the two policemen, then set myself at Holmes's request to estimating the time of death. The younger office, Kelly by name, assisted me in removing the trousers of the heavy victim to take the all-important temperature readings.

While I was doing this I noticed Holmes conducting his usual meticulous examination of the room, filling several envelopes with materials gathered from the victim, the room, even from around the outside of the massive lock on the ancient front door.

Finally as I was putting my instruments away, I noticed him, with the assistance of Lestrade, balancing a long rod on the top edge of the open panel of the window and holding it by his right eye.

The policeman had been silent as ever during the investigation of the hallway, but now, Lestrade said, with some eagerness "Do you see what I mean, Holmes?".

"I do indeed. This could have the most weighty consequences."

Turning to me, Holmes asked, "Have you any idea of the time of death."

"It is not a precise science, but from the inner temperature of the body, given that it was a warm night, I would put the time of death about eight PM last night."

The two detectives exchanged meaningful looks.

"If you can join us in the drawing room, Watson, we can have some tea while I tell you more about the circumstances of the case. You can leave a more detailed examination to the police surgeon for later."

He paused, "Perhaps constable Kelly can show you where to wash your hands before we take tea."

Some minutes later we sat drinking the finest Indian tea from beautiful bone china.

"The body outside is that of Sir Richard Wallace. You may not have heard much about him, for he tries to keep his life as private as possible. He came from humble Scottish stock, went to the colonies as a young man and made a substantial fortune from jute. There he gained the reputation as a hard businessman who was not overly respectful of the law or for the native people."

Holmes paused to take a Huntley and Palmer biscuit from a laden plateful

"Coming home, he laid his money around lavishly, found himself welcome in society and married well, to the third daughter of Lord Basingstoke. Soon after that, though, things began to turn sour for Sir Richard. His young wife left him after barely a fortnight, and the most terrible rumours of his abuse of the poor creature began to circulate. He quarrelled with several reputable figures, developed a reputation as a wild gambler, lecher and drinker, and has barely succeeded in maintaining a place in society."

I took one of the excellent biscuits myself and tut-tutted.

"I seems to me, Holmes, that such a figure would make many enemies. We will have our work cut out tracking down the person."

"Would that that were the case, " Lestrade spoke, " But from the time of his death and the angle dictated by the open window, the shot can have come from only one source, the leftmost rear attic window of Number Four, Gloucester Crescent."

I opened and closed my mouth.

I had been about to suggest that we dash around and lay the criminal by the heels but I had spoken in haste once too often before, and had at last learned to exercise a degree of care in what I said to escape the scorn of my admirable but often excessively forthright friend.

His eyes crinkled with laughter as he saw my hesitation, "Why, Watson, you seem to be gaining an element of diplomacy at last. I will put you out of your misery. There are strong reasons why we cannot burst into Number Four and clap the darbies on it's resident."

He leaned forward. "There are dark undercurrents here. Our deceased friend had a strong penchant for very young women, especially those of the inferior classes or of other races, all of whom he treated as if they were of no account. Some weeks ago there was something of a public outrage when he was ejected from a social gathering at the German Embassy and accused of making an improper, indeed damnable, proposition to one of their younger maidservants."

Holmes paused, his face dark. He never but took the greatest offence at any wickedness directed against the weak by the powerful. He took out his pipe and filled it with an ounce of common plug.

"He also had a deep and long standing hatred of the Germanic races, one that can hardly have been diminished by his recent exploits. He was the principal of a small but passionate organisation, informally called the Anti-Teutonic League, that sees the unification and growth of the German empire and of its military as being a threat, indeed an insult, to the British Empire. They are not unrepresented in the House or amongst the lower orders of the Press, and constantly cry out for a bigger army and navy to face the threat they feel comes from Berlin."

Lestrade listened intently, his face a mask of discomfiture. He liked his crimes simple, without any taint of the political.

"So you see, Watson," Holmes applied a careful Vesta to the bowl of his great meerschaum, "When I tell you that Number Four, Gloucester Crescent is the home of the military attaché to the Embassy of Germany, you must understand why we need to proceed very carefully in this matter. Wolfgang Muller was the very man who ejected Wallace from the embassy. What many people would think to make things worse, is that he is a sure shot and has a collection of fine German-made hunting rifles at this home. Diplomatic immunity means that we cannot act directly if he is indeed the culprit, but if Wallace's anti-German associates or the yellow press get wind of this we will see a serious diplomatic breach, if not agitation leading to actual war and potentially thousands of deaths."

I must smile now with some bitterness at our naiveté when I consider the completely unforeseeable casualty figures of the current conflict.

There was a knock at the door, and two officers led in a shocked manservant, Fuller. After he had been calmed down with a cup of tea laced with brandy from my hip flask, he explained his absence the previous night.

"Sir Richard prefers that we servants, there are five of us sir, two maids, a cook (my wife Eliza) , a coachman and myself, keep to the back of the house. He has been especially insistent upon it these last few weeks. 'E's had something preying on his mind, sir. Never leaves the house without Collins the coachman with him, and never by day. The curtains have to be pulled close, day or night, when he is in a room, and he keeps a revolver by him by day and night."

He paused, "Yesterday he indulged my wife and myself in a pair of tickets for the evening performance of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show."

"Was he normally such a generous master?" Holmes enquired with a raised eyebrow.

"Indeed no sir, he were always a careful man with a shilling, or indeed a sixpence. Eliza was wondering if he had bought the tickets some weeks ago, before he became so reluctant to leave the house."

"Did you enjoy the show, Mr. Fuller?"

"Indeed and we did, Mr. Holmes. My wife nearly fainted at the sight of the screaming savages a chasing of the stagecoach, shooting their arrows and waving their tomahawks. The trick shooting was like nothing I had seen in the services. Of course, we only used smooth bore Brown Besses in the militia, not these repeating rifles."

I wondered at this departure by Holmes from the essential facts.

"Were there any other servants in the house last night?"

"Collins was in his room above the stables, and Mary and Joan, the maids were in their room across the courtyard. Neither of them heard anything, and nothing was suspected until Joan came in to light the fires at 7 O'clock."

Holmes dismissed the manservant, and gave Lestrade clear instructions. The crime must be kept a secret for as long as was sustainable, and the locals must be carefully interviewed. In such a exalted locality a shot would be very noticeable in the quiet of a summer's evening. After another hour spent with the remaining servants, Holmes dismissed me too, with orders to meet him later in his rooms.

I went for a walk on Regent Street and happily fell in with Mary. To my chagrin, while the expensive lunch I treated her cost much less than she would have spent shopping, I had hoped it would make the end of her day out. Regrettably it merely re-energised her to return to the fray, and she insisted on my accompanying her to bear her bags and bundles.

Those married men among you will understand the haggard, exhausted state in which I appeared at Holmes's door, an hour after my time.

He cut off my excuses with a curt, "I am astonished that you consider an expedition to purchase shoes for your estimable wife to be a more important activity than the solution of an ugly crime with grave implications for the security of the state."

I took my reproof in silence. There are matters to do with married life that lie beyond any possibility of explaining to a bachelor.

Moving on, he said, "I spoke to the unfortunate maid who was the object of Wallace's assault in the German Embassy. She confirmed every detail of the story and was most complimentary about the gentlemanly behaviour of the attaché. Further enquiries have convinced me that he is an aristocrat of the old school who would happily impale a ruffian such as Wallace on his sword or even shoot him with a pistol, either of course being properly carried on under the formal code duello, but that he would shrink from cold blooded murder."

"And yet it looks black against the man, Holmes."

He nodded, "My second port of call was to Scotland Yard. Lestrade was of little use, but one of his men recalls hearing what could have been a muted shot in the area at approximately the right time, preceded, curiously, by a sharp whistle. Of course he neither recorded the time nor the location in his notebook, nor followed up the matter."

He sighed, "My final call was to the grounds where Buffalo Bill Cody has located his famous Wild West Show. I met some of the performers, both Paleface and Redskin, and spoke to the great man himself. I was so impressed I obtained tickets for us both for Saturday's performance."

I raised my eyebrows. His recreations are more usually of the more cerebral variety.

"More importantly, I discovered that our late baronet had also been a patron of the show, visiting several performances and becoming a frequent visitor, as we can put it, backstage."

"Indeed, Holmes." It was not easy for me to conjecture the direction in which this narrative was leading.

"It transpired, of course, that his interests lay not in exciting re-enactments of battles, nor in the admiration of feats of horsemanship or marksmanship, but in pestering the younger Indian women with his lewd advances, in particular a young Hopi called "Kaya". His predilection for the exotic is one that has often been commented upon. Fortunately she confided her predicament to a friend who informed Mr. Cody. Wallace was at once forbidden from the grounds. "

He took his pipe from the chimney-piece and began excavating the bowl.

"Mr. Cody is an estimable man of generous principles. You will recall that he started on his adventurous career when his father was killed by those who resented his bitter opposition to negro slavery."

He continued. "It appears that Wallace became obsessed by this girl, and I use the term "girl" with some exactness, for she is little more than a child. By some means he discovered the place she was lodging. My enquiries among the darker places in the East End tell me he now offered a substantial reward to Bull Finnegan's crew to abduct her."

He chuckled, "As you will recall, we tangled with the Bull, a person large in body though less so in intellect, during the Newbury racecourse matter. He has done his best to stay clear of me since."

I recalled the crack as Holmes's stick shattered on the thick skull of the gang leader and smiled.

He went on, "Three nights ago Bull and two of his mates broke into the rooming house and found Kaya and two other ladies of the show engaged upon stitching new costumes for the performers."

He chuckled, "Perhaps if he had seen the show Finnegan might have had a better idea of what he was up against. He left almost as soon as he had arrived, with bullets in his thigh and, as one would delicately put it, lower back. One of his confederates managed to precede him out the window, the other remained behind with a shattered knee cap, where, I am afraid, he was persuaded to expose the name of his paymaster before being sent to hospital in a cab."  
He was interrupted by a knock at the door.

Mrs. Hudson ushered up Mr. Fuller, who stood clutching his bowler hat in the doorway until invited in, and produced some crumpled, sooty pieces of notepaper from an envelope.

"I am sorry to disturb you, Mr. Holmes, but Joan found this at the back of the fireplace when she was setting the fire earlier. It may have been there for three days, but no more, as he had ordered the room to be left untouched since Tuesday."

The four crumpled pieces of paper, smoothed by Holmes eager hands, spelt out a sinister message.

"Wallace,

You have interfered with this young lady once too often. She has suffered all her life as a member of a persecuted race on top of the normal indignities commensurate with being a woman and an orphan.

Unless you desist from your advances I can guarantee that you will not live to see the new moon."

He stood up, his face glowing with a regrettable delight that such a dark threat should not have engendered.

" A woman's hand, American if I am not mistaken. Clearly someone who has lived close to nature, who measures time by the forces of nature rather than by the calendar. It would appear that Miss Kaya has been more fortunate in her protectors than the rest of her unfortunate race. I must spend some time in thought tonight Watson, so you may leave me, but I fancy we will have a solution by breakfast."

The following morning my Mary was still suffering from a residue of guilt from her extravagance at the hatters and boot makers, a guilt that would not be long lasting, if history be any guide, and I had no difficulty in escaping to Baker Street for breakfast.

Great platters of bacon rashers, sausages, eggs, and kidneys, stood on the sideboard, and Mr's Hudson was bearing in a giant rack of toast and a substantial teapot in the door when the bell rang belowstairs.

Minutes later she ushered in a modestly dressed woman in her late twenties.

"Mrs. Butler." Holmes welcomed her in.

Perhaps five feet tall at most, she had strong rather than pretty features. Her smile, when she shook our hands, was warm and genuine, her American accent pleasant.

"I must say I am flattered by your invitation to breakfast. I had not hoped to meet so distinguished a person in my brief visit to London. I have to confess, however, to being a little mystified by your reasons for inviting me."

"Pray take a seat and have breakfast before it goes cold. I take it you like our British breakfasts."

"Bless you, Mr. Holmes, I spent my childhood from the age of nine living on what I could shoot. This is a luxury for me."

As was ever his teasing way, Holmes had kept me in the dark as to the reason for inviting this lady. As the meal went on, and as I listened to their sparkling conversation without offering more than an occasional platitude, it came to me that this woman could be in many respects the equal of Holmes himself.

Clearly self educated, she was a remarkably intelligent woman with a powerful will hidden under a pleasant manner. She had a powerful instinct for justice, for those deprived of their rights because of their race or even, surprisingly, of their gender. The time flew as the two enjoyed fencing verbally.

Finally, we pushed our plates away with a sigh and poured a last cup of tea.

"Mrs. Butler, I suspect you well know the reason for this meeting."

Only a faint increase in the stiffness of that elegantly gowned back betrayed any discomfiture.

"I am afraid I do not know what you mean, sir." She took a sip of tea, her hand utterly steady.

"I have been asked to look into the death of Sir Richard Wallace. I believe you have made his acquaintance?"  
She nodded.

He carried on.

" I have heard of the tale of his infamous harassment of your young friend, among many, many other young ladies. My informants have also told me of how three of this city's most desperate hooligans burst in upon three defenceless ladies as they sat at their needlework, and of how two of the hooligans barely escaped with their lives while the third, captured, broke the precepts held dear to every villain and ratted upon his master."

The lady took a scrap of fine silk from her bag and dabbed at her nose in silence.

When she returned it I noticed that she left the bag close by her side, and partially open.

"I don't know about London ladies, but where I grew up a lady might think to have a shooting iron in her sewing basket in case of emergencies. That road agent or footpad or whatever you Britishers call him, why he was not to be compared to old Abe when it came to oratory, but when my friends, one a Choctaw and one a half-blood Cherokee, told him of what their people used do to their prisoners, he sung like a canary."

Holmes smiled, " You may close your handbag if you wish. I mean you no harm."

She eyed him keenly for a long minute, then clipped the bag shut with a determined snap. As it closed I caught a glimpse of the handle a large revolving pistol.

I sat back with some alarm, wishing Holmes had given me adequate warning to have my own revolver ready to hand.

I tried to convey this to him with a glance but he ignored me.

Holmes sat back and put his fingers together.

"I may have to fill in parts of the tale by conjecture, but this is how I think the story went. It came to your knowledge that your young friend was the victim of a determined obsession in the mind of Sir Henry Wallace. Either yourself or Mr Cody had him ejected from the show, and you hoped that was the end of it. However he made the most resolute attempt to have the girl abducted soon after, but your presence defeated that attempt.Soon after you wrote him this letter,"

and here he held it up,

"anonymous of course but not difficult to prove to be from your hand, a letter making a very clear threat."  
She shrugged, and he went on,

"It would seem that the message did not frighten him at all, or if it did, that his contempt for women made him make some further attempt of which we no nothing."

She sighed. "He lay low for two days. The day before yesterday Kaya was practicing her act," she explained, "Kaya is one of the most gifted of our trick riders, and when she came on Wallace sitting on the front row grinning at her in a most evil and meaningful way. She well nigh fell from her horse with shock and terror, and was badly shaken for some considerable time after. As soon as her act finished we went looking for Wallace but he was gone. Some of us went to his home straight away but he was barricaded within. We watched for him for a few days but he stayed in his lair, doors locked, curtains drawn. I think his courage was of the kind best adapted to brutalising women, and that he thought the better of facing equal odds."

Holmes stood up and walked to the window, then turned sharply,

"You faced a dilemma. The law would favour a baronet of means over an impoverished young woman of a different race. The show is to remain in London for several months, and Wallace's huge resources would eventually overcome whatever defences you could muster for her protection. Your own life might also be at stake, as such a brute would profoundly resent his humiliation at your hands.

You could not send the child back to America, for as an orphan her family, her profession, are all linked to the show. You probably lay awake at night and thought of him pacing his hallway, like some destructive wild caged creature, awaiting his opportunity to pounce on his victim."

His voice hardened. "Nobody but you could have carried out the final act in the drama. Perhaps alone, perhaps in a hansom cab with a confederate at the reins, you came to the house late in the evening, and probably parked the cab inconspicuously under the elm trees across the street. Your confederate may have rung the doorbell, knowing it would not be answered, but knowing that the victim, driven by curiosity, would come into the hall. At a given moment yourself or your confederate blew on a whistle."

Holmes stared sightlessly into the distance, imagining the scene. His voice lowered to a whisper.

"The pacing brute hears a whistle. What can it be? It can hardly be a threat. He bends and looks through the keyhole to see what it can be."

He bent, peering as if through a keyhole, his body an image of curiosity.

He raised his arms, holding an imaginary rifle.

"Across the road, one of the finest shots on the planet sees the point of light from the keyhole momentarily go black. In that fraction of a second, she fires the small bore rifle. The bullet strikes the tiny hole almost central, leaving the barest fragment of lead on the edge, and penetrates the eye of the victim, spinning him partially around. He dies instantly. Immediately the hansom leaves."

Her face had turned slightly pink, her breathing increased.

There was a pause. Holmes dropped his arms and resumed his chair. Instinctively he took his pipe from his pocket, and hesitated, looking at his guest for permission. She nodded and he took a fistful of odorous shag from the slipper on the mantelpiece.

"What now, Mr. Holmes."

"It is not my place to give advice to the police except in extremely unusual circumstances. Where the crime was performed in such a cause I will not put myself forward. Such a foul creature as he was had escaped the law on many occasions, and your actions had a sort of justice about them, albeit a kind more familiar on your western frontier than in the courts of our ancient city. The crime has paced further difficulties before me which are no concern of yours, however, and I must think them through without delay. I am afraid I must bid you good day, Mrs. Butler."

She rose, curtsied, her face now a little more flushed, shook our hands with a small but powerful grip, smiled, and was gone.

"Now our dilemma is all the greater, Watson. We cannot expose that brave and estimable young woman, yet we cannot risk war by allowing thew crime to go unpunished."

Before I could question Holmes about the strange visitor, Mrs. Hudson appeared with red wax sealed message that had just arrived by special messenger from the House.

Holmes ripped it open and read it with a grim smile.

"It is from Mycroft. Neither we not Herr Muller need not fear the Anti-Teutons any more. He has drawn their teeth."

"How?"

"Mycroft is not one to let moral constraints weight over heavily upon him. A young person has approached the acting head of the League and demanded a thousand guineas for the return of some compromising letters relating to an unorthodox relationship between himself and Sir Richard. The league paid instantly without demur, and they have come to believe, though some dark machinations of my brother's, that the baronet was shot in the course of a lover's tiff. They will be doing everything possible to hush the matter up. No doubt Mycroft and our intelligence services have forgers who can create such letters given a few hours notice."

His voice rose, " We live in strange times, Watson, when the abuse of young helpless women is seen as normal but where rumours of an excessive though largely harmless friendship between two males can cause the instant destruction of a reputation."

I shook my head.

Holmes is frequently given to utter such strange opinions.

"It was pure genius to connect a faint trace of lead in the keyhole to the presence of sharpshooters in the Wild West Show, Holmes."

He bowed his head in acknowledgement, Holmes never being one to reject praise.

"One bone I must pick with you Holmes, though, was that you did not warn me to have my revolver to hand. She had a pistol in her handbag, and we might have been in some danger had she misjudged your intentions."

Holmes's handsome face darkened, his attitude to criticism being the perfect opposite of his attitude to flattering comment, then relaxed into a grin, "We will let you judge that next Saturday, Watson, after the show is over. I will allow you to chastise me then if you still feel it warranted."

Of course he had calculated well, and he escaped any reprimand from me. We both enjoyed the show immensely, and I especially took great pleasure in the part where Holmes was dragged from his seat to have a cigarette shot, to tremendous applause from an enormous crowd, from between his lips at a range of fifty yards, by the woman known to me as Mrs. Butler and to the rest of the world knows as Annie Oakley.

**Postscript**

Holmes appeared in my study some weeks ago while I was reviewing the manuscript for the publisher. For once he was not severe in his criticisms, softened I think by his admiration for that lady. I know that only one other woman can compare with her in his opinion.

"I can only find one criticism of the late Mrs. Butler," he commented.

I placed the pages in a large envelope and affixed a shilling stamp. "What was that, Holmes?"

"Mrs Butler had the opportunity to perform the same trick on Kaiser Wilhelm as she did on myself many years ago. Had her hand had for once lacked its steadiness France would be a place of holiday rather than a charnel house for the young men of four continents."


End file.
